


Whiskey and Rhyme

by Luka



Category: Primeval
Genre: Christmas, M/M, Pre-Slash, Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 20:11:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20069890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luka/pseuds/Luka
Summary: Stephen is facing a lonely Christmas, but Ryan has other ideas.





	Whiskey and Rhyme

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a Primeval Denial Secret Santa. The prompts were:  
The shadow of the past  
Will to live  
Love and war  
Whiskey and rhyme
> 
> Special Forces OCs Ditzy, Lyle, Blade, Kermit and Finn appear by kind permission of Fredbassett.

Connor was hanging decorations and pursuing Abby with what looked like a branch of mistletoe. Claudia was pulling on a short red coat, then adjusting a smart beret minutely. Stephen knew that they were on their way to the team’s Christmas party in a nearby wine bar. He hadn’t been invited. It wasn’t as if he celebrated the festive season, but he couldn’t hide a pang of pain. Come the new year, he was moving on – he couldn’t stay where he wasn’t wanted.

“Wankers. Forget them and come and play cards with the lads.” Lyle was there, his eyes fixed contemptuously on Cutter, who was in Claudia’s personal space.

Stephen knew the Special Forces lads’ views on the professor – and they certainly weren’t repeatable in polite company. Cutter’s inability to hide his feelings when he felt a soldier had been too trigger-happy was legendary, never mind that lives might have been saved. They were firmly on Stephen’s side when it came to the business with Helen. Ditzy had summed it up with a terse: “You should have kept your dick in your pocket, but she was your tutor and had no excuse.” And the final straw was Cutter leaving Ryan for dead in the Permian – despite Ditzy, the voice of reason, pointing out that he’d have been unlikely to have found a pulse. Only Cutter could be blissfully unaware of the soldiers’ cold contempt.

“Thanks, Jon, but I …”

“Get a shift on, mate, it’s your go.” Ryan stuck his head out of the restroom door. He’d been back at work for a month after six months recuperation, and was on light duties for the foreseeable future. The clue to as to why was the network of scars across his face and torso.

“I’m just getting Stephen to join us and bring some class to the proceedings.”

“You’ve had a lucky escape, Dr Hart,” came a familiar drawl from behind him. “I find Christmas parties to be a peculiar form of purgatory. A hand of whist with the military’s finest would be pure joy by comparison.”

Stephen turned around, on the grounds that he preferred to have Lester where he could see him.

Lester bared his teeth in something that was tenuously related to a smile. “Oh, and I understand that Captain Stringer’s team are covering the festive season, and I for one don’t wish to hear his creative language when he finds you cluttering the place up, Captain Ryan.”

He turned a beady eye on Stephen, who’d hoped to throw Ryan to the pinstriped bureaucrat. “And there is no need for you to be here either, Dr Hart. I’m sure we can depend on Professor Cutter for the safety of the realm until the new year.”

Stephen’s eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. Cutter would be well pissed off at having to work over Christmas – everyone knew he pulled rank shamelessly and retreated to his remote Scottish cottage, whatever he was supposed to be doing at the time. Stephen had accompanied him on a number of occasions – another invitation that had been rescinded.

There was the faintest twitch of Lester’s lips. “So, gentlemen, I think we’re adequately staffed. Kindly go home and stop making the place look untidy. And I shall take the opportunity to talk to the professor about this and that. I sincerely hope things will be different when you return in the new year.”

Stephen kept his face expressionless and narrowly avoided shrugging his shoulders. He wouldn’t be holding his breath for Cutter to change his now well-engrained view that Stephen was a traitor.

“I wish you the compliments of the festive season. Now, a word please, Lieutenant Lyle …”

Ryan fixed Stephen with an unwavering stare as Lester and Lyle moved off towards Lester’s office. “Let me guess. If you leave here, you’ll go back to a flat with crap central heating and nothing in the fridge …”

Stephen shrugged, hoping it was nonchalant. “And you have a well-stocked fridge and central heating?”

“I have a freezer,” said Ryan. “Get your overnight bag – you’re coming to Hereford with me.”

Stephen opened his mouth to decline, pictured his bleak flat, looked at Ryan’s adamant expression and said weakly: “Thank you. I won’t be a minute.”

*~*~*~

Stephen opened one eye, groaned quietly, and closed it again. The previous evening’s pint had been one pint too many. The SF lads had whisked him off for their traditional Christmas Eve pub crawl around Hereford, culminating in Finn having to be removed hurriedly when he looked set to perform the national anthem with a pair of underpants on his head.

The bedroom door opened and Ryan appeared with a mug of strong tea and two paracetamol. “Happy Christmas,” he said, looking horribly sprightly and none the worse for the evening’s activities.

“And to you,” said Stephen, prising both eyes open and realising his mouth resembled the bottom of a budgie’s cage.

“The shower’s all yours. We’ll be off about 10am.”

Stephen furrowed his brow. “Where are we off to?”

“A good, bracing walk that’ll blow the ARC cobwebs away.”

“Oh. Right.” Stephen downed half the tea and both the tablets, rubbing his fingers through his hair

“Right, I’ll leave you to it. See you downstairs.”

When Stephen appeared 20 minutes later, showered and half human again, Ryan set a huge fry-up on front of him. Stephen, who usually breakfasted on muesli and orange juice, cleared his plate. 

Ryan washed up, then handed Stephen a small rucksack. “Come on, then, let’s get going.”

*~*~*~

Stephen took a huge bite of a cheese sandwich and sighed with pleasure. He could safely say this was the best way to spend Christmas Day, high up on the Brecon Beacons with Tom Ryan for company. 

Ryan passed him a mug of tea from a thermos, and a slab of fruitcake. 

“Don’t tell me you can bake as well,” said Stephen, finishing the sandwich and making inroads into the cake.

“Nope. But my neighbour Sadie can. It’s my reward for defending the realm and clearing out her gutters.”

Stephen ate the last crumbs of the cake and accepted a refill of tea. There was a companionable silence as they scanned the frost-topped peaks. That was one of the many things that Stephen liked about the soldier – he didn’t expect non-stop conversation.

“So what’s the story with Cutter?” said Ryan quietly.

“I can’t believe your lads haven’t told you …” Stephen’s heart sank into his boots – he should have guessed there’d be a downside to the day. 

“I’d rather hear your side of it.”

Stephen shrugged. “Not surprisingly, he took exception to my sleeping with his wife.”

“And …?”

“And that’s it. I’m persona non grata now.”

“Did you know she was married?”

“Yes, but she told me they were separated. Nick was on an exchange programme in the US.”

“Don’t universities have rules to stop tutors sleeping with their students?”

“Most do. But that relies on the university finding out,” said Stephen, wishing that Ryan wasn’t so politely persistent. 

“People must have guessed.”

“Probably. She’d got past form – and I wasn’t the last. She dumped me for her latest PhD student.”

“Didn’t Cutter know?”

“He says not.”

Ryan snorted. “He probably wouldn’t have noticed even if they’d been bonking in front of him.”

Stephen smiled tiredly. “Probably not.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m not having all this shit on my watch. Cutter needs to grow up. If Lester doesn’t do something, I’m going to raise hell once we’re back in the new year.”

Stephen started to argue, but it suddenly occurred that it didn’t matter any more, given he was going to resign. No one would miss him once he’d gone.

Ryan added: “And if anyone resigns, it should be Cutter.”

“He’d never resign.”

“Doesn’t mean you have to.”

“How did you …?” Stephen had thought he had the best poker face in the business. Clearly Ryan could read minds.

“Call it an educated guess. You made a wrong call, but Helen Cutter was the one at fault, and the professor should realise that. The project can’t afford to lose your skills. Tame academics must be ten a penny.”

Stephen started to disagree, but realised that Ryan had a point. There were scholars out there who’d trample over their grandmothers to get this chance. One or two would be as good, if not better, than Cutter – and considerably less of a loose cannon.

Ryan added: “And this kind of discord is dangerous. Lives could be at risk, and I’m not having people dying through pig-headedness. Anyway, time to move on, or we won’t be back in daylight. There’s steak and chips waiting for us in the freezer.”

~*~*~*

Boxing Day and the lads appeared at Ryan’s house late morning – apparently bacon butties were the tradition, chased down by fried slices of Christmas pudding. Stephen had muttered about going home, but Ryan just ignored him and handed him the breadknife to help the sandwich production line along.

Once the food had been scarfed down, and scurrilous gossip exchanged about people Stephen didn’t know, Lyle announced: “We’re playing whiskey and rhyme.” There was a chorus of groans, loudest of all from Kermit who didn’t deny it when Lyle pointed out he was crap at rhymes.

The rules appeared straightforward, if potentially revealing – a swig of whiskey, followed by a rhyming couplet about the person to your right. Lyle filled Stephen’s glass and gesticulated to him to start proceedings.

“It’s time to put that motorbike away if you want to live another day,” said Stephen weakly, completely at a loss for anything better. Kermit grinned unrepentantly, gave him the finger and added: “That’s so weak it needs mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”

The gathering made loud – and unrhyming – observations about pots and kettles.

Kermit rolled his eyes at Ditzy: “It’s getting really old. Why are your hands so sodding cold?”

“Nurse, my sides!” said Ditzy, accepting a top-up of whiskey and fixing Finn with a beady stare. “Sorry to be so terse, but you’re not suited to that nurse.” 

Finn looked affronted, then turned to Blade. They could almost see the cogs turning in his brain before he announced: “We all saw in two ticks that you’re lusting after Miss Wickes.”

“Fuck off,” said Blade mildly, his cheekbones turning a faint shade of pink. “Oi, Jon. We can no longer let it fester – we know you’re shagging James Lester!”

Lyle grinned angelically and pointed at Ryan: “It’s obvious you fancy the arse off Stephen Hart – now it’s time to do your part!”

There was a dead silence. Stephen, who’d drunk more in one day that he normally would in a week, could feel his face heating up. Bloody hell, had he been that obvious? He thought he’d done a good job of hiding his feelings for Ryan.

Ryan’s body stiffened and he flushed pink. “Mind your own business, Jon.”

“Have another go. That doesn’t rhyme, you know.”

“Since you ask, I’ll stuff this beer can up your arse.”

The gathering erupted into an argument over pathetic rhymes, all manner of perceived slights and how Lyle was an annoying knob. Stephen couldn’t help but notice, though, how Ryan’s thigh pressed closer to his.

~*~*~*

“And you can stop looking like that cat that’s got the fucking cream,” growled Ryan, as Lyle sauntered slightly unsteadily towards the front door sometime around midnight. The rest of the evening had been spent in a particularly belligerent game of Monopoly, and a filthy version of Scrabble with no rules Stephen had ever come across before.

“My work is done with your ugly mug so I’m entitled to look smug.” He winked at Stephen and headed into the darkness.

Ryan, who’d drunk enough to turn his usually pale cheeks pink, looked consideringly at Stephen and walked out of the room. He appeared with a sprig of greenery in his hand and a determined look in his eyes. He fixed Stephen with a stare and said: “I hope this isn’t a spectacular fucking miss, but would you join me in a kiss?”

Stephen closed his eyes and acquiesced. Strong arms pulled him into an embrace and he was lost.

“I’ve finally found a good reason to love the festive season,” murmured Stephen. 

Ryan grinned and rewarded him with another kiss.


End file.
